Postscript is a programming language (in reverse polish notation, see [RPN in Tcl]) that is used mostly for representing printable documents. More decent printers usually understand (interpret) Postscript right away.

Popular tools to visualize Postscript files are ''ghostscript/ghostview'' [http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/].

The Postscript Language Reference Manual and some related specifications can be found at [http://partners.adobe.com/asn/developer/technotes/postscript.html].

'''Syntax in brief:''' Words are separated by whitespace, but the ten special characters 
%/(){}[[]]<> also end the previous word (with some exceptions). % starts a comment, that continues to the end of the line. / before a word makes that word literal (prevents that it is executed). Parentheses delimit strings; \ is escape character in strings. Braces delimit procedures (executable arrays); they work sort of like in Tcl. Brackets construct normal arrays, which are similar to lists in Tcl, except that they have fixed length :-(. The PS code
 a [b /c /d e] f
is sort of equivalent to Tcl
 $a [list $b c d $e] $f
or (if f is more of a command than a variable)
 f $a [list $b c d $e]

A typical Postscript file starts with a %! comment, and it usually contains a couple of %% comments that contain markup for programs that manipulate Postscript files.

 %!
 %%Creator: Gif2PS
 /#copies 1 def
The last line is an assignment: "assign to the variable #copies the value 1", or ''set #copies 1'' as we would say in Tcl.

See also [Manipulating Postscript]